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Friday 8th of December 2023

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Abortion If you don’t think abortion is an economic issue, you probably don’t have a uterus. Gretchen Whitmer © 2023 Kwiple.com
Anti-Semitism You have said the actual truth Elon Musk, 4:52 PM – Nov 15, 2023, responding to a tweet claiming that Jews push “diabolical hatred against whites” © 2023 Kwiple.com
Artificial intelligence But for some, the fear that AI may one day take white-collar jobs is already a reality.  In an ingenious study published this summer, US researchers showed that within a few months of the launch of ChatGPT,  copywriters and graphic designers on major  online freelancing platforms saw a significant drop in the number of jobs they got, and even steeper declines in earnings. This suggested not only that generative AI was taking their work, but also that it devalues the work they do still carry out. John Burn-Murdoch, Financial Times, November 10, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Authoritarianism Authoritarian forces only succeed when they are tolerated and protected by mainstream politicians. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority  © 2023 Kwiple.com
Authoritarianism  Fear is what often drives authoritarianism. Fear of losing political power and, perhaps more important, fear of losing one's dominant status in society, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority  © 2023 Kwiple.com
Authoritarianism This is the banality of authoritarianism. Many of the politicians who preside over a democracy's collapse are just ambitious careerists trying to stay in office or perhaps win a higher one. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority  © 2023 Kwiple.com
Bullshitters say President Trump has always stood for law and order, and protecting the Constitution. Steven Cheung © 2023 Kwiple.com
The Constitution of the United States According to the U.S. Senate, there have been 11,848 attempts to amend the U.S. Constitution. But only twenty-seven of them have been succcesful. America's Constitution has been amended only twelve times since Reconstruction, most recently in 1992 —  more than three decades ago. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority   [27/11,848 = 0.002279 percent success rate  — a snowball's chance in Hell of amending it] © 2023 Kwiple.com
The Constitution of the United States The people made the Constitution, and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of their own will, and lives only by their will. John Marshall, in Cohen v. Virginia [1821] © 2023 Kwiple.com
Democracy Democracies cannot survive without some  essential counter-majoritarian institutions. But they also cannot survive — at least as democracies — with excess- ively counter-majoritarian institutions. And that is where the United States finds itself today. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority  © 2023 Kwiple.com
Democracy Democracy's assassins always have accomplices  — political insiders who appear to abide by democracy's rules but quietly assault them. These are what [Juan] Linz called “semi-loyal” democrats. … Indeed, throughout history, cooperation between authoritarians and seemingly respectful semi-loyal democrats has been a recipe for democratic breakdown. …  History teaches us that when mainstream poli-  ticians take the more expedient path of semi- loyality … extremists are often strengthened and a seemingly solid democracy can collapse upon itself. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority  © 2023 Kwiple.com
Democracy The United States, once a democratic pioneer and a model for other countries, has become a democratic laggard. The endurance of our pre-democratic institutions as other democracies have dismantled theirs makes us a uniquely counter-majoritarian democracy at the dawn of the twenty-first century. … … it is the world's only democracy with both a strong, malapportioned Senate and  a legis-  lative minority veto (the filibuster). In no other democracy do legislative minorities routinely  and permanently thwart legislative majorities. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority  © 2023 Kwiple.com
Global warming Even a billion humans cutting their emissions  wouldn’t achieve anything significant, with seven billion others getting richer and emitting more. Obsessing about personal footprints also plays into the strategy of fossil-fuel  producers, which love to cast climate change as an individual moral responsibility. In reality, we can reach Net Zero only by transforming collective energy, and industrial and agricultural systems. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, November 23, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Israel-Hamas war It does not seem that Israel understands what its endgame is. Without a clear sense of an ending, there can be no answer to the most crucial moral and strategic question: When is enough enough? Even in the crudely mathematical logic of vengeance, the blood price for Hamas’s appalling atrocities of October 7 has long since been paid. The body count — if that is to be the measure of retribution — has mounted far beyond the level required for an equality of suffering.  Yet it appears to have no visible ceiling. What factor must Jewish deaths be multiplied by? Fintan O'Toole, New York Review of Books, December 7, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Count votes in Congress by: 1. Calculating a Member's Proportional Vote (MPV) for each member, as follows: MPV = SPNP / NLRS where: SPNP = State's Percentage of the National Population NLRS = Number of Legislators Representing the State (in that legislature) 2. Totaling “yes” MPVs and “no” MPVs 3. Passing if total MPV is more than 50 OTHERWISE Abolish the Senate © 2019 Kwiple.com
Political inequality At no time during the twenty-first century have Senate Republicans represented a majority of the U.S. population. Based on state populations, Senate Democrats have continuously represented more Americans since 1999. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority  © 2023 Kwiple.com
Political inequality  Four of nine current Supreme Court justices — Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — were confirmed by a Senate majority that collectively won a minority of the popular vote in Senate elections and represented less than half of the American population. And three of them — Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett — were also nominated by a president who lost the popular vote. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority  © 2023 Kwiple.com
Political inequality In 1790, a voter in Delaware (the least populous state) had about thirteen times more influence in the U.S. Senate than a voter in the most populous state, Virginia. In 2000, by contrast, a voter in Wyoming has neary seventy times more influence in the U.S. Senate than a voter from California. What began as a strictly small -state bias has become a rural -state bias. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority  © 2023 Kwiple.com
Political inequality Today … Republicans are predominantly the party of sparsely populated regions,  while Democrats are the party of the cities. As a result, the Constitution's small-state bias, which became a rural  bias in the twentieth century, has become a partisan bias in the twentieth-first century. We are experiencing our own form of “creeping counter-majoritarianism.” Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority  © 2023 Kwiple.com
Post-2022 Senate shituation 15 states (Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming) 2020 population: 40,737,128 Senators: 30 Republicans 1 Senator per 1,357,904 people — 1 state (California) 2022 population: 39,995,077 Senators: 2 Democrats 1 Senator per 19,997,539 people 19,997,539 / 1,357,904 = 14.7, therefore: average 15er's vote is worth nearly 15 times a Californian's, a Californian's vote is worth less than 7% of an average 15er's — 1 state (Wyoming) 2022 population = 579,495, therefore: 1 Senator per 289,748 Wyomians, a Wyomian's vote is worth 69 times a Californian's, a Californian's vote is worth 1.4% of a Wyomian's  © 2023 Kwiple.com
Schools The South gave the Negro the best education fitted for the life he was to iive. He was trained to the school of discipline and self-control … He was taught to do every necessary thing and to do it well … Where can you find a more varied and valuable education? Mildred Lewiss Rutherford © 2023 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say Sam will never speak an untruth. It's just not in him. Barbara Fried, Sam Bankman-Fried's mother © 2023 Kwiple.com
The South There's a new South rising. It's younger, it's more diverse … and it's more inclusive. LaTosja Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter © 2023 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say  Now that we clearly see Antifa as terrorists, can we hunt them down like we do those in the Middle East? Matt Gaetz, 1:48 PM – Jun 1, 2020, after Trump called antifa terrorists © 2023 Kwiple.com
Ukraine A country needs a closed sky like a home needs a roof: it is unfathomable that missiles can rain down on you at home, just as it is absurd to imagine snow falling in your bedroom. But “to close the sky” would have been to risk open war with nuclear-armed Russia, and Europe and the US declined. Sophie Pinkham, New York Review of Books, December 7, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Ukraine Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning. Alexander Dugin, far-right Russian nationalist philosopher known everywhere as “Putin's brain” © 2022 Kwiple.com
 
Voting rights Five unelected Supreme Court justices dis-  mantled an unmistakingly democratizing law,  the VRA [Voting Rights Act], which had been passed and renewed on muitiple occasions.  In 2019, when efforts to restore the VRA were blocked by a Republican Senate majority, that majority represented seven million fewer voters than the Senate Democratic minority that backed it. In January 2022,  when majorities in both houses of Congress  — and more than 60 percent of Americans — backed voting rights legislation, it was blocked by a minority in the Senate. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority  © 2023 Kwiple.com